Dead Man Walking

Sister Helen Prejean

Chapters 10–11

Key Facts

1. The mandate to practice social
justice is unsettling because taking on the struggles of the poor
invariably means challenging the wealthy and those who serve their
interests. “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”—that’s what
Dorothy Day, a Catholic social activist, said is the heart of the
Christian Gospel.

In Chapter 1, Prejean describes her
call to work for social justice. No longer content to live a life
of quiet religious contemplation, Prejean is seized by a new understanding
of the Gospels and Jesus’ teachings. The transformation she undergoes
is a difficult one. It means foregoing peace and comfort for confrontation,
challenges, and problems. For Prejean, the call is a “mandate,”
an inescapable demand placed on her by Christ’s teachings. Dorothy
Day, known for her lifetime of work on behalf of the poor, inspires
Prejean with her idea that the gospels call people to confront the
rich. Comforting the afflicted is not enough. In order to fully
realize the message of the Gospels, those who directly or indirectly
participate in a system of social inequality must be challenged.

2. I see a column of inmates, most
of them black, marching out to soybean and vegetable fields, their
hoes over their shoulders. Behind and in front of the marching men,
guards on horseback with rifles watch their charge. In antebellum days
three cotton plantations occupied these 18,000 acres, worked by
slaves from Angola in Africa . . . Since its beginnings in 1901,
abuse, corruption, rage, and reform have studded its history.

In Chapter 2, Prejean describes seeing
Angola for the first time. Her description suggests that the modern
day prison bears a strong resemblance to the slave plantation Angola
once was. Long before Angola became a prison, its history was filled
with abuse, corruption, and rage. Its reincarnation as a prison
has done little to mitigate that legacy. Prejean notes that since
the prison was opened in 1901, abuses have continued. The penal
system and slavery are drastically different institutions that are
connected by a shared history of human rights abuses, racial discrimination,
and violence.

3. “What would happen, Mr. Marsellus,”
I ask, “if each time a condemned man appeared before you, the members
of this board began recommending life, not death? What if you shared
with the governor that you find the death penalty so morally troubling
that you cannot bring yourself any longer to give your vote of approval
to these executions? What would happen then, Mr. Marsellus?”

In Chapter 8, Prejean describes confronting
the members of the Pardon Board during Robert Willie’s hearing.
The board, which has so far refused to grant clemency to any of
the death row inmates who have come before it, is supposed to be
the last hope for the condemned man, yet political concerns guide
it more than justice. Prejean believes that every individual is
ultimately responsible for his or her own actions, and individuals
cannot ignore their moral obligations by claiming bureaucracy or
politics is to blame. By asking the board members what would happen
if they commuted the sentences from death to life, Prejean is asking
them to acknowledge the responsibility they share in perpetuating
a system that some, including the board chairman, have openly acknowledged
as unjust and arbitrary. Her question is at once a challenge and
an opportunity. In accepting their responsibilities as individuals,
she is suggesting the board members can empower themselves to bring
about real change.

4. “I did these things,” he says.
“I sat in judgment on these men like that—the guilty and the innocent.
But who was I to sit in judgment? It still bothers me. I’m sorry.
I’m really sorry.

At the end of Chapter 8, Howard Marsellus,
the former Pardon Board chairman, apologizes to Prejean for the
role he played in helping the state enforce the death penalty. Marsellus,
who was arrested and jailed for taking bribes while serving as the
Pardon Board chairman, embodies the inevitable fallibility of the
state. Throughout her narrative, Prejean asks how we can possibly
trust governments with the right to decide who should live and die
given their long history of abuse and errors. Marsellus’s description
of the rampant abuses in the Pardon Board system is startling and
disturbing evidence of just how fallible the justice system is.
Marsellus, in his apology, acknowledges the extraordinary power
granted to him and implies that power should not be entrusted to
any one man or system.

5. That, I believe, is what it’s
going to take to abolish the death penalty in this country: we must
persuade the American people that government killings are too costly
for us, not only financially, but—more important—morally.

After discussing Gandhi’s and Martin
Luther King’s perspectives on nonviolent aggression as a form of
social change in Chapter 9, Prejean states her belief that capital
punishment will be abolished only when the American people turn
against it. In order for that radical shift in perspective to occur,
the American people, who are collectively responsible for the actions
of their government, must take an honest and informed look at the
death penalty. Prejean believes that widespread misconceptions about
justice must be corrected, and a moral examination of capital punishment
must be undertaken. There is a practical argument against capital
punishment, based on the financial cost of each execution, but also
a more substantial moral argument: killing, whether done by an individual
or government, is essentially wrong. Prejean’s arguments against
the death penalty take both arguments into consideration, but it
is always the moral cost that lies at the heart of her assessment.